Housing affordability crisis hits ACT disability sector
Image: Mothers, Karna O’Dea (back left) and Sandra Blaik with their boys Malcolm O’Dea (left) and Rohan Delahoy want to set up a special community house where the boys can live and receive care after their parents are gone.CREDIT:ELESA KURTZ
Sherryn Groch, from the Canberra Times reports
‘The Perfect STORM: housing affordability crisis hits the ACT disability sector.
Why it matters
- The ACT has released a new housing affordability strategy promising more accessible homes
- It comes as the disability sector warn high rent and issues with the NDIS roll-out have left people worse off than ever
- Innovation grants will be offered for affordable housing targeted at disability
In just a few weeks, Malcolm O’Dea will graduate high school.
While the milestone will certainly be cause for celebration, it will also usher in a period of even greater uncertainty for his parents Karna and Julian.
Malcolm has autism and requires one-on-one care, 24 hours a day. As his parents grow older, they fear what will happen to Malcolm if the worst should happen to them.
Together with life-long friend Sandra Blaik, whose son Rohan also has complex autism, Ms O’Dea is hoping to set up a house where both boys can live independently with support, perhaps forming a community alongside others with a disability or developing their own business.
It’s one of a number of specialist accommodation models that could be explored under the ACT government’s new housing strategy, released late last month.
Under the plan, a new innovation fund will offer grants of up to $125,000 for low-cost housing projects targeted at people with disability, with expressions of interest opening early next year.
Most new public housing will be built to meet the needs of older people and those with a disability, as the government joins the push for national minimum accessibility standards in building regulation. Across the ACT market, a mandatory rating scheme that measures a property’s accessibility when it is advertised will also be rolled out, starting on a voluntary basis.
And it can’t come soon enough. Advocates warn Canberra’s growing housing affordability crisis has now hit its disability sector, just as teething problems with the National Disability Insurance Scheme begin to bite.
Carers ACT chief executive Lisa Kelly said rents were higher than she had ever seen them, pushing people out of the private market and onto long waiting lists for public housing.
“It’s the Bermuda Triangle in some ways and now the disability world has come up against the affordable housing problem we have here in Canberra, there’s just not enough properties.”
“This is one of our biggest social challenges at the moment.”
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Article Reference: Canberra Times 14 November 2018
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